Posted on 02/14/2002 9:01:00 AM PST by sheltonmac
Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia. While hanging out with his friend, the discussion turned to popular movies of the day. When I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social relevance of the movie Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all seriousness; "Do you guys have movie theaters down there?" To which I replied, "Yep. We wear shoes too."
Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food and wine seminar in Aspen, Colorado. We were seated with two couples from Las Vegas. One of the Glitter Gulch gals was amused and downright rude when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant. "Mississippi doesn't have fine-dining restaurants!" she demanded and nudged her companion. I fought back the strong desire to mention that she lived in the land that invented the 99-cent breakfast buffet.
I wanted badly to defend my state and my restaurant with a 15-minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would surely change her mind. It was at that precise moment that I was hit with a blinding jolt of enlightenment, and in a moment of complete and absolute clarity it dawned on me -- my South is the best-kept secret in the country. Why would I try to win this woman over? She might move down here.
I am always amused by Hollywood's interpretation of the South. We are still, on occasion, depicted as a collective group of sweaty, stupid, backwards-minded and racist rednecks. The South of movies and TV, the Hollywood South, is not my South.
This is my South:
- My South is full of honest, hard-working people.
- My South is colorblind. In my South, we don't put a premium on pigment. No one cares whether you are black, white, red, or green with orange polka dots.
- My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll. It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has B.B. King, Muddy Waters, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Elvis.
- My South is hot.
- My South smells of newly mowed grass.
- My South was the South of The Partridge Family, Hawaii 5-0, and kick the can.
- My South was creek swimming, cane-pole fishing, and bird hunting.
- In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the kingdom.
- My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet.
- In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing.
- My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits and catfish.
- In my South we eat foie gras, caviar, and truffles.
- In my South, our transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the country.
- In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday.
- In my South, family matters, deeply.
- My South is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding, and oatmeal cream pies.
- In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca Cola and hot sauce on almost everything.
- In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the women.
- My South has air-conditioning.
- My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria, and hydrangeas.
- In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person that got on the bus.
- In my South, people still say "yes, ma'am," "no ma'am," "please," and "thank you."
- In my South, we all wear shoes....most of the time.
My South is the best-kept secret in the country. Please continue to keep the secret....it keeps the idiots away.
Going to the Washateria once a week to do laundry when we were tired of fooling with the wringer-washer that was out in the wellhouse. The deep freeze filled in the summer to last the rest of the year. Mad Butcher and Piggly-Wiggly.
Worrying about "the fastest snake on earth" catching us when we went down the path to the two-holer. And slop jars! The corn crib that was the summer bedroom. An uncle who had a rubber hand because his was cut off at the Georgia-Pacific pulp plant. Cedar posts cut for 50cents each. Riding in the back of the pick-up named Bessie to the country store to get real peppermint sticks.
Listening to Charlie Pride. Wondering what lived under the propane tank. The smell of the pig pen. My grandmother's buscuits. Eating rabbit my grandfather shot and killed my mother told me was chicken. Decoration Day at the family cemetary and "hellfire and damnation" sermons. Singing good Fanny Crosby hymns at church and "When the Roll is Called up Yonder" at the one-room white church. Baptisms in the creek.
Listening to rain on the tin roof. Collecting sweet gum balls. Stray dogs that showed up to birth a litter of pups under the house. Listening to rattlesnakes out in the field. Watching my grandfather shave in a tin basin with a straight razor then rub alcohol all over his smooth face and bald head, then roll his own with Prince Albert in a can. And the best, sitting on the porch shelling butterbeans and black-eyed peas or shucking corn with my cousins, watching folks ride by and waving to perfect strangers.
Admit it--you're anti-semantic.
All this southern food talk has got me hungry ... I'll be heading over to Mary Mac's for supper ... fried chicken, turnip greens, black-eye peas, and some banana pudding for dessert ... and sweet tea, of course ... Y'all be good ...
As late as the mid-1970's in my hometown, the KKK would hold fund raising roadblocks at major intersections just like fire departments do today. They'd be dressed in their hoods and cloaks holding their buckets out at stopped cars.
I got into photography in my teens and one night I learned of a KKK rally outside of town. This was one of the rallys where they'd set a cross on fire and such.
Well, some friends and I decided we'd go and sneak our cameras in under our winter jackets. I was scared to death. I got REALLY scared when we got to the rally and were "asked" to donate money by a robed Klan'er holding a machine gun. Naturally I forked over some cash!
During the rally, I noticed some newspaper photogs shooting so I felt it was safe to take my camera out and shoot a little film. I got some great shots of the cross burning ceremony.
BLESS YOUR HEART~~~~~~
Someone once noted that a Southerner can get away with the most awful kind of insult just as long as it's prefaced with the words, "Bless her heart" or "Bless his heart." As in, "Bless his heart, if they put his brain on the head of a pin, it'd roll around like a BB on a six lane highway." Or, "Bless her heart, she's so bucktoothed, she could eat an apple through a picket fence." And if you can smile sweetly when you say it, that is even better. There are also the sneakier ones : "You know, it's amazing that even though she had that baby 7 months after they got married, bless her heart, it weighed 10 pounds!"
As long as the heart is sufficiently blessed, the insult can't be all that bad. I was thinking about this the other day when a friend was telling me about her new Northern friend who was upset because her toddler is just beginning to talk and he has a southern accent. My friend, who is very kind and, bless her heart, cannot do a thing about those thighs of hers, was justifiably miffed about this. After all, this woman had CHOSEN to move to the South a couple of years ago. "Can you believe it?" said my friend. "A child of mine is going to be taaaallllkkin' liiiike thiiiissss." Now, don't get me wrong. Some of my dearest friends are from the North, bless their hearts. I welcome their perspective, their friendships and their recipes for authentic Northern Italian food. I've even gotten past their endless complaints that you can't find good bread down here.
The ones who really gore my ox are the native southerners who have begun to act almost embarrassed about their speech. We've already lost too much. I was raised to swanee, not swear, but you hardly ever hear anyone say that anymore, I swanee you don't. And I've caught myself thinking twice before saying something is "right much"; "right close"or "right good" because non-natives think this is right funny indeed. I have a friend from Bawston who thinks it's hilarious when I say I've got to "carry" my daughter to the doctor or "cut off" the light. She also gets a giggle every time I am "fixin" to do something. My personal favorite was uttered by my aunt who said, "Bless her heart, she can't help being ugly, but she could've stayed home."
To those of you who're still a little embarrassed by your Southernness: take a dose of redeye gravy and call me in the morning. Bless your heart! And to those of you who are still having a hard time understanding all this Southern stuff, bless your hearts, I hear they are fixin to have classes on Southernese as a second language!
Bye Bye, y'all!
Say which? Remember, I was raised in a barbaric impoverished hellhole and don't know nothin', except that, aside from the fact that your assertion reflects your prejudice towards Southern ways and history in relation to other regions of the U.S., "delusive" or "misleading" would have been a better term to use than "fallacious". Never use a fancy word when a plainer word will do.
Ahhhhhh, such sweet music!
Bless your heart, you really DON'T get it do you? The south is defined by its relationship with barbeque and pigs and cattle are what separate the "south" from the "west." East Texas is kinda borderline, kinda like northern Florida.
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